You might know Adam LaRoche as a 12-year MLB first baseman who, in 2012, won both the National League Silver Slugger award and a Gold Glove with the Washington Nationals. Or perhaps you’re more familiar with Adam LaRoche, the Buck Commander, whom you’ve been lucky to share hunting camp with over the past decade or so.
While both are accurate, you might not realize that through his E3 Ranch Foundation, Adam now dedicates most of his time to locating and recovering human trafficking victims.
Adam Laroche Quick Bio
- Former MLB First Baseman Adam LaRoche won a Silver Slugger and Gold Glove in 2012 with the Washington Nationals.
- Passionate about hunting and the outdoors, he joined the Buck Commander team alongside country music stars.
- Founded the E3 Ranch Foundation to support veterans and later expanded it to fight human trafficking.
- After witnessing the horrors of trafficking firsthand, he became a law enforcement deputy and leads a task force rescuing victims across the U.S.
Born In Baseball And Hunting
As the son of a Major League Baseball player, Adam moved around quite a bit during his early years. He was born in California while his father was playing for the Angels.
Then came New York, where his dad played for the Yankees. By the time Adam was 4 or 5, his father had retired from playing baseball but immediately went into coaching in the MLB. The next few years, Adam lived in Chicago and New York as his dad coached for the White Sox and then the Mets.
Regardless of where they lived during the season, Adam’s family always returned to their ranch in eastern Kansas during the off-season.
Adam’s love for baseball and hunting developed as a young child, growing stronger each year. Both were spawned by his dad’s interest in those sports.
“Baseball was just what we did. Our lives revolved around it,” he said in an exclusive interview with Hook & Barrel. “But hunting and the outdoors were always equally important to me. I didn’t grow up big game hunting because my dad was a bird hunter, mainly quail and pheasant.
My brothers and I grew up with shotguns long before we had a bow. I told my dad that I wanted to get into deer hunting, and he got me a bow for my birthday when I was in the 6th grade. I never put it down.”
Adam reminisced about how one early bow kill — a fairly difficult feat, at that — landed him in some hot water.
“I remember on Easter going out and shooting a rabbit,” he said. “My mom was not really impressed with that. I thought it was a big deal, but she told me that Easter was the only day of the year I probably shouldn’t be shooting rabbits.”
Adam LaRoche’s Path To Major League Baseball
After years of hard work in high school and college, Adam eventually made it to the major leagues. Playing baseball for a living soon made hunting even more meaningful to him. “A lot changed after college when pro ball started,” he said. “I still loved baseball, but like anything, the higher up you go, it becomes a little more of a job. Hunting just continued to be a passion.
“The great thing about baseball and the schedule is that we would always finish right at the beginning of hunting season. My friends in other sports, mostly the NFL, were pissed that we would get off the entire hunting season, and they would be working during the whole hunting season.”
Adam played in the majors for 12 years, most notably with the Atlanta Braves and the Washington Nationals. A skilled first baseman and exceptional hitter, he earned the National League Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards with the Washington Nationals in 2012. After 12 seasons in the MLB, Adam retired in 2016.
One of his favorite times in the majors was when he and his younger brother Andy were fortunate enough to play together in Pittsburgh for a season.
“Andy came up with the Dodgers and then got traded over to Pittsburgh,” he said. “We played most of the season with him playing third, and I was playing first for the Pirates, and that was really fun.
“Actually, the best part about that was he lived with my wife and me, and we had two really young kids. So, we had a built-in babysitter anytime we needed it!”
Most people who have ever put on a baseball glove, including myself, have at one point wished they could be a major leaguer. That memory led me to ask Adam what the best part of being an MLB player truly is.
“It’s the fact that you can have 25 grown men in a clubhouse, or a locker room for our NFL counterparts, and act like total immature children for a few hours,” he said.
“But when the lights come on and it’s time to play, you go lock in and get a job done. So, I think it’s just that really unconventional office that we all got to work in every day," he added.
"The only thing I’ve seen similar to that would be the veterans that we get to spend a lot of time with, specifically in the special operations community. It’s the brotherhood. You just can’t really replace that.”
Adam Joins Buck Commander
While still in the majors, Adam found himself with a unique opportunity. Joining Buck Commander gave him another chance to mix business with pleasure by hunting and filming with Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty, country singers Jason Aldean, Luke Bryan and Tyler Farr, along with great teammates Ryan Langerhans, Tom Martin and Ryan Busbice.
“That camaraderie and that brotherhood that I was talking about is hard to find anywhere else,” Adam said. “That’s what’s been really neat. When I was playing baseball, I had that.
"I have that same camaraderie with the Buck Commander guys. The hunting is awesome, and big deer and cool hunts are all great. But it doesn’t come close to just the enjoyment I think we all get from just being in camp together.”
With many different personalities involved in Buck Commander, Adam said that variety is also one of the things that makes the television program so compelling.
“It really is a blast,” he said. “There are some really different personalities, but just really genuine guys. It’s been neat with some of our guys in the country music industry and getting to know them 20 years ago when they were just kind of starting their career, and then to know now that they’re the exact same people as they were back then. That says a lot about them.”
As a Buck Commander, Adam has been blessed to hunt some incredible deer in amazing locations. But his very favorite hunt throughout the show might come as a surprise.
“My favorite is every year when we get to do it at the ranch—at our place in Kansas and Missouri,” he said. “It’s just been kind of a tradition for the last nearly two decades. It’s one that I always look forward to. It’s always fun to have those guys out.”
The E3 Ranch Foundation
While still in the majors, a couple of other things happened to Adam. Both were eye-openers that changed his life and his future path.
“When I was playing in D.C., back in 2011 and 2012, during the time when the war was hot and heavy, I got to spend some time at Walter Reed Hospital,” Adam said.
“I got to spend some time with our soldiers there and get to know them. Then I came back the next year to play ball in D.C. and got to meet the same guys who were getting well enough to leave Walter Reed, so we would just host some of them out at the ballpark.
“Through that, I met quite a few who loved the outdoors, but just because of the military hadn’t been able to experience it in years. So, we would fly some of them out to the ranch in the offseason and host them on hunting trips. And that was how the E3 Ranch Foundation got started.”
The other thing that happened to Adam toward the end of his MLB career involved what turned out to be a disturbing trip overseas. There, he learned about an incomprehensible evil that he’d never really considered much.
“About the same time in the offseason, I took a trip to Thailand and met up with a guy who was doing counter-human trafficking work there,” he said.
“He was a friend of mine from the U.S. and had moved his family over there to combat human trafficking. I got introduced to that, and it was just some of the worst evil I’d ever heard of.”
Upon returning home, Adam couldn’t shake the incredible evil of human trafficking from his mind. And he felt like God was calling him to do something about it.
“I remember praying in the kitchen one day at my house and kind of getting on God, saying, ‘Hey, why are you letting all this happen? And why don’t you do something about it?’ I remember hearing, ‘Why don’t you do something about it?’
"He just wouldn’t leave me alone about it. That was honestly a big reason why I left baseball a little early, because I just didn’t know if I could continue to play a game with all this going on.”
After a few more trips abroad, Adam realized that human trafficking is also a major issue in the United States. In fact, he said it is the second-fastest-growing criminal enterprise after the drug trade.
The E3 Ranch Foundation soon shifted much of its focus to fighting human trafficking and recovering victims, while still helping veterans and organizing hunts for them. Adam attended police academy and became a Deputy with the Bourbon County Sheriff’s Department so he could more effectively work with other law enforcement agencies across the country.
Thanks to the foundation’s funding, he was able to assemble a task force of law enforcement and analysts to support and assist agencies across the country in recovering human trafficking victims.
The task force is prepared to respond wherever the need is greatest. The week I spoke with Adam, he and other members were working on cases in California and Nevada.
Today, Adam spends most of his day on counter-trafficking work. In fact, along with caring for his family, that has become his life’s mission.
“A lot of what we deal with now is children,” he said. “Over the last year, the majority of our cases are minors who are being sex trafficked, and it’s just really, really sad. When we recover them, sometimes it takes months for them to truly be restored and rescued from it. But when they are, it’s incredibly rewarding.
“When they’re out of that life, their traffickers are behind bars and you see the life back in them and they’re acting like kids again, that’s what makes it worth it.”
Adam LaRoche’s Road Ahead
What does the future hold for a guy who’s achieved so much in baseball, hunting and working to help victims of human trafficking? The answer is more of the same, if Adam has his way.
“I would love to do this as long as I’m physically able or until God directs me into something else,” he said. “Right now, we’re still building our team, growing, getting more efficient and expanding our reach. I hope to be doing this for a good, long time.”
How To Get Involved With The E3 Ranch Foundation
Hook & Barrel readers are invited to join the E3 Ranch Foundation in its mission to support combat veterans, battle sex trafficking in the United States and provide crisis relief worldwide.
“Your partnership helps us bring light to the darkest places—empowering survivors, supporting veterans and responding to crises with innovative solutions,” Adam said. “Together, we can create a lasting impact where it matters most.”
To learn more about the foundation and support its worthy causes financially, visit e3rf.org.
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